Hobbes Studies: what should be the standard edition of 'Leviathan'?

S.A. Lloyd (USC) and A.P. Martinich (Texas) have issued the following open letter, which seems to me pretty sensible:

Noel Malcolm’s recent scholarly three volume Clarendon edition of Hobbes’s Leviathan is without question an immensely valuable resource for Hobbes studies. We scholars appreciate having the English and Latin texts face to face, along with Malcolm’s annotations. What should be in question is whether requiring all scholars to refer to it facilitates, or instead burdens, our own work, and the efforts of many of us to stimulate broader interest in Hobbes studies.

Access to this Clarendon edition is de facto restricted to those who are elite or to those who are wealthy. It is available for purchase for US $375, a prohibitive cost for most people. Some university libraries in the developed world have bought a single edition to be shared amongst the entire faculty, but most college or university libraries have no edition at all. The volume cannot serve as a common reference point because so few enjoy access to it. Professors cannot teach using it because students cannot access it. Functionally, no one in the developing world could follow along with our arguments were we to have to make our references to the Clarendon volume.

This edition is also physically burdensome, weighing in at 7 pounds, too heavy to carry in a backpack or purse to class or to the coffeehouse. All that weight is unnecessary, because most people do not need, even if they were able, to simultaneously survey the Latin.

A system of reference to Leviathan by chapter and paragraph number, and/or 1651 page number, would enable the largest audience for Hobbes studies, regardless of social or economic status. All the good and widely used editions, including those of MacPherson, Tuck , Curley, Gaskin, Martinich, and now Malcolm, provide 1651 numbers; and almost all have paragraph numbers (which readers themselves can add to any edition). 1651 pages are so widely included that requiring them as the standard reference convention has none of the defects of using Clarendon edition page numbers.

In the interests both of fairness to scholars, and of expanding accessibility to Hobbes for a larger public, we urge scholars to refer to Leviathan withnumbers to chapters and paragraphs and/or pages as they occur in an edition of 1651. We urge editors not torequire their contributors to include page references to the Clarendon edition.

S.A Lloyd and A.P. Martinich

(Thanks to Michael Sevel for the pointer.)

UPDATE: OUP Philosophy editor Peter Momtchiloff writes with some useful information: "I notice the post about Lloyd and Martinich on Noel Malcolm’s Leviathan. It is strange that they do not mention the paperback version, which is available for one-third of the hardback price which they cite. The edition is also available online at any institutions which subscribe to Oxford Scholarly Editions Online."